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The Forum > Article Comments > Not quite as smart as we think we are or should lawyers govern? > Comments

Not quite as smart as we think we are or should lawyers govern? : Comments

By Michael Paton, published 30/8/2011

The fallacies of our society and government...Is democracy and the 'agreement of people' logical and beneficial for the long term?

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Interesting enough, Michael.

However, war. The "military-industrial complex" has been a driving force behind strategic decisions by the UK, USA and others including Japan, over the ages. Need for resources drove the Roman imperialist campaigns - and they didn't invent that.

Indeed, now that I think of it, I'd be interested to know of major examples of armies bringing peace. Quincy Wright's "The causes of war and the conditions of peace" (1935) argued that the causes of peace are inversions of war; and Blainey's "The causes of War" (1973) contains this gem: "The conflicting aims of rival nations are always conflicts of power. Not only is power the issue at stake, but the decision to resolve that issue by peaceful or warlike methods is largely determined by assessments of relative power" (page 150); and elsewhere.
Posted by Frederic Marshall, Tuesday, 30 August 2011 9:20:27 AM
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http://forum.onlineopinion.com.au/thread.asp?article=12531#216672

Frederic, interesting comment & article.

the last paragraph contains the real issue, "universal education". We used to have that system in the land of OZ, which kept the electorate informed enough to cast a valid vote.

That was until the mid 1960's when closet communists "reformed" it into an ignorance manufacturing system designed to indoctrinate communist spinganda weasel words.
Posted by Formersnag, Tuesday, 30 August 2011 10:00:14 AM
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.
"Reification ... the treatment of abstract concepts as realities."

The way religions work. With an appeal to abstract authority. To thwart good governance.
.
Posted by McReal, Tuesday, 30 August 2011 10:13:24 AM
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Interesting article Michael. However your article itself contains a number of errors.

The first is the idea of “our ability to survive as a species over the long-term”. We don’t survive “as a species”. Evolution doesn’t happen at the species level, nor even at the level of the individual, but at the level of the individual gene.

The second error is the idea that the market is somehow intrinsically limited to short-term information inputs. You make no attempt to prove that, and you do not say relative to what?

The third error is the idea of “the market” exercising “power”. State actors use power in obtaining their revenue, because if you don’t pay tax, you’ll be locked up, or have your property forcibly taken. However “the market” is just another way of saying voluntary exchanges. Using force or threats is illegal in market transactions, so strictly speaking there is no such thing as “market power”. If a baker sets up shop and you want to buy a bun, that doesn’t mean he’s using “power” against you. Everyone has complete power over whether he enters into a market transaction.

I take your gist, which seems to be this: “Any environmental considerations are lost in the pursuit of competitive advantage for short-term profit.”

However you don’t say why or how you know.

The implication is that human use of the environment should be more focused on the longer-term. Since it would be fallacious to attribute to environmental values a supernatural status, we must confine ourselves to the issue of the utility of the environment in satisfying human wants now, versus in the future. But again you make no attempt to prove why people should prefer longer-term to shorter-term satisfactions, to say how you know, or to prove it.

“The more democratic a governance, particularly tied with universal education, the more chance there is of us understanding and coping with reality.”

No there’s not. The values of democratic government: taxation, inflation, government debt, compulsory indoctrination, forced redistributions, and war, all consume capital and therefore tend to promote less sustainable resource use.
Posted by Peter Hume, Tuesday, 30 August 2011 12:35:46 PM
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Evolution happens to populations and their entire collection of genes, by a number of mechanisms.
Posted by McReal, Tuesday, 30 August 2011 1:45:57 PM
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McReal, have a read of "the Selfish Gene". Populations are no more than an emergent property of genes. The gene transcends species, even genera and families, since the same genes can be found in many different species. The speciation is a fairly trivial phenotypical expression of the gene's urge to reproduce.
Posted by Antiseptic, Tuesday, 30 August 2011 2:00:07 PM
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